Most of the victims died in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz
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A stone wall engraved with the names of 76,000 Jews who were
deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II has been
unveiled in Paris.
The "Wall of Names" memorial is located at the entrance to the French capital's newly renovated Holocaust museum.
Some 11,000 of those deported from 1942 to 1944 were children. Nearly all were killed - mostly at Auschwitz in Poland.
French President Jacques Chirac will officially open the site on Tuesday, before flying to Auschwitz.
Mr Chirac will be one of many world leaders present at
ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi
death camp.
'Prayer to the dead'
More than 2,000 Holocaust survivors and relatives of
victims attended the inauguration ceremony in Paris' central Marais
district.
They also took part in reading out a prayer to the dead.
The new site is an expansion of two institutions - the
Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr and the Centre for Contemporary
Jewish Documentation.
"[The Memorial] will help in teaching a story that continues to haunt our everyday life," said its president Eric de Rothschild.
It took two years for several researchers to compile the list, drawing on Nazi secret police records and also Jewish archives.
"This wall keeps our innermost secrets in its stone and
delivers them to those who pass," said France's former Health Minister
Simone Veil, herself an Auschwitz survivor.
When the memorial officially opens on Tuesday, visitors
will also be able to visit the basement crypt where ashes of some of
the death camps' victims are kept.
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